For our upcoming air racing game Altitude0 we decided to create an online track editing tool.
It allows players to place gates and obstacles around terrain, it basically allows creation of a racing track. This track is later used in a game for racing. Game runs on Windows PC but editor should run in any modern web browser that supports WebGL.
We have second Altitude0 beta version ready. We made some adjustments and fixes to plane physics: throttle was implemented properly. Manual rudder was also added with professional controls.
This is still a closed beta version. But whoever is interested in testing, please join us on our website. Thanks.
@Jackson31: Thanks a lot for your suggestions. It means a lot coming from a beta tester. I totally get your point about topics 1 and 2. We will work on tuning the plane physics in the following days. I will let you know when the update is ready. Thanks again!
To anybody reading this thread, what kind of music do you think would fit this game (Altitude0)? We have almost 0 resources to pay for music and on top of that we haven't decided what style of music to use for the game. For now, our promo videos use fast paced rock music, but I am not sure we should rather use more electronic beat sounds, something to make it feel more contemporary. All I know is that it should be fast paced music score.
This game looks great fun! Cant wait to play it I especially like the vapor trails, those are really well done
Thanks. Closed beta testing is on currently. If you are interested, you can join by visiting our website. That is, if you don't mind unfinished features and some bugs
There are just a few requirements to participate in the testing:
Altitude0 is an online plane racing game therefore we will ask you to create an online account and share results with other players online.
You should be able to speak some English to let us know about problems regarding the game you may discover. If you can read this then you qualify
Your computer should have decent graphics card (NVidia or AMD). Currently graphics cannot be cut down much for lower end machines, will be fixed in the future.
You don't mind reporting bugs & once in a while random game crash (super frustrating to us)
You like racing games (planes, cars, carts, we like them all).
The main goal of Altitude0 first beta version is to achieve best possible times on different tracks and share results online with other players. Each race result is recorded and replay is shared with other players online.
Closed beta version should be ready by 22nd of November (Thanksgiving Day for our US friends). The reason we are announcing it in advance is that honestly we don't know how many people are willing to participate in the testing and how our servers will handle all the data. So in the beginning, we will start with a limited number of players and gradually open the game to more players if everything goes OK.
If you want to be the first to play Altitude0: Lower & Faster, please join the beta program: the sooner, the better. Join beta program at our website http://www.altitude0.com
We also welcome and accept your top-notch ideas & suggestions to make the game better.
Nevermind the game, just making this video was bloody hard. So I guess this post was just made out of frustration and I got a bit too touchy about the idea, nobody would get to see it.
Here's the deal. I've been working my butt off with my partner to create teaser trailer for our game Altitude0.
After finally putting it on youtube, I realized even my Grandma managed to get more views for her 70th birthday video in a week time. Seriously that's depressing.
youtube link
Now I don't expect people will like my game (actually it's not even out yet) but please consider checking this video out at least.
These days we are working on the open beta demo of the game. It will be an online game and the first version will have a small taste of it, namely achieving good race times and sharing high-scores and replays with others online.
Hope some of you guys may want to test it when it's ready.
A quick update: Since my last post, a lot of effort was put to present Altitude0 as a full blown game: more sound effects, menus, race replays and other basic ingredients that most racing games require.
I haven't used a 'Wingman Extreme', but my own setup is nice and easy. Especially with rudder foot pedals. You lose a lot of 'feel' and precision when you play with keys, as keys are either on or off. Which means that you have to perfectly time your key presses and / or tap them rapidly for precision movements.
I see you even like controlling rudder separately. Currently I added switch to make rudder automatic or manual but playing with keys makes rudder hard to control. I guess there are players that could appreciate manual rudder although this game is not a full blown flight sim. And yes keys are annoying with the tapping approach, certainly gamepad helps with that.
In N-Gen, I was able to perform much tighter, low to the ground (in that game, the lower you were to the ground, the faster you went. It was a great mechanic, as it naturally rewarded skillful flying) maneuvers without crashing than my opponents who were using arcade controls. So yes, there was a distinct benefit.
Since Altitude0 is about flying low we will also reward low flying with better acceleration. I wonder, was N-Gen speed close to the ground better just a tiny bit or was it a big advantage?
As for my challenge idea, I'm thinking more along the lines of individual short challenges. Like (forgive my lack of artistic skill):
During the race we added 2 sub-games (aka short-runs) for now: - 360 barrel roll; between start and end point you have to do 360 roll. - flying very low; fly under bars that are placed in sequence within some small amount of time. - probably we will add more short runs in the future
Otherwise thank you for taking time to even sketch the idea, I assume the plane in the sketch is climbing up and going down with a sequence of rolls between gates. Good idea I believe.
I read back a bit and saw that you are considering not supporting flightsim joystick controls though. I think that would be a big mistake. You should have it as an option for us diehard pilots. Personally, I can react quicker, fluidly, and more naturally with a joystick than with any button or joypad.
You should include "Arcade" controls for the 1 key left/right type scheme, and "Pilot" controls for more the full flight controls. That way you're not alienating either player type.
Personally, I would love to see a "stunt" challenge mode, where you have to perform lots of acrobatics to complete the level. Like flying through a cave, weaving in and out of city skyscrapers, etc... Not necessarily as a race, but more a series of precision flying challenges.
Thanks for your response. One question about flightsim joystick. You mentioned that you can react quickly with joystick. I found them very big and that it takes a lot more energy than just pressing gamepad buttons. I guess I have to update my tools, I've been using an old 'Wingman Extreme' joystick and it feels very heavy (hard to move).
I noticed that N-Gen racing had 2 control modes : arcadish & pro. Did pro mode controls allow any better results or was it just more realistic and therefore harder to use?
We could support simpler controls (single button to go left/right), but I don't like the idea that players with simpler controls would achieve better times than players with pro controls.
About precision flying. In the current version of Altitude0, I love flying tight through gates (knife edge) to shave off a fraction of a second here and there while making sure not to hit too many gates. I hope many players would appreciate this aspect of the game.
Flying racers are one of my favorite genre of game. Especially ones like what this appears to be.
Does this have true flight controls or simplified ones? I'm really hoping for true controls, as there has only been one game like that (N-Gen Racing for PSX) that I know of and it was incredible. All the simplified ones are... well, cheap feeling in comparison.
Thanks for letting me know about this game, I will check videos and reviews, it looks like many people liked it.
About controls. We decided that we want players to be able to fully control plane (roll, pitch, yaw), although this could be a challenge to beginners. So for example, pressing left only rolls the plane but it still goes forward. To go left you have to also pull plane up at the same time (hope this makes sense).
I noticed that many arcade airplane games make it very simple to turn left/right by pressing a single button, while barrel roll and similar acrobatics are cheated by pressing some special buttons.
I guess we'd like to encourage players to experience full airplane acrobatics, our world has also a lot of up & down movement (ex. climbing over the mountain).
The game is progressing great. I don't remember if this was already asked but what technology are you using (engine?) and what OSes do you plan to target? Also how long has it been in development?
Thanks, Currently we are targeting Windows with a decent graphics card. Later we'll see.
Engine is "home grown", it grew out of different projects during years : 3ds max plugin + one failed project + another frozen one If nothing else I guess code was modular enough to be updated with time. We decided to do airplane racing last summer.
It still looks great =) I was hoping for some plane customization features (pick colors and logo maybe). I think it would work well with the online aspect of the game.
I like your idea, we are trying to make it easy to modify plane skins. Hopefully it will be fun to participate in teams and have matching plane look.
At the start we will let players modify skins with some paint program. Later on I would like to build some simple editor to make it easy to apply at least some small changes (like logos, color).
I was a big Python user on top of using C++ and C#.
Lately dynamic variable typing started really bothering me. I guess I am a clumsy developer and I need compiler to help me as much as possible with correct names, types and other stuff before I run the application. I ended up embedding mono version of C#. If it's easier to work with, I'm not sure.
I guess commonly used scripting languages have pros and cons, pick one - get the job done.
Show Posts
